Fiddler is a popular web traffic debugging tool which lets you inspect web requests.  This ability is very helpful when developing applications which consume web services.  I’ve been working with a team on an Android application and I needed to use Fiddler with Android.  In this post, I’m going to show you how to setup Fiddler to inspect web traffic from an Android device running Ice Cream Sandwich.

1) First, if you don’t have Fiddler yet, you can download it here.

2) Second, you need to set and take note of some Fiddler options.  Check the “Allow remote computers to connect”.  This option will allow your Android device to connect to Fiddler via your computer’s local IP address and proxy port.  You can see and/or configure what port Fiddler listens on as shown below.  The default proxy port is 8888.

3) Restart Fiddler so that it loads your new configuration options.

4) Next, you’ll need to setup your Android device to run it’s connectivity through Fiddler.  Navigate to Settings >> Wireless & Networks >> WiFi.  Select the network you are using.  If you are debugging your Android application, you’ll probably be using your local wireless connection.

5) Enter the basic settings and check “Show Advanced Options”.

6)  Under Proxy Settings, select “Manual” so we can manually enter the IP address & proxy port which Fiddler is running on.

7) Enter the IP Address and Proxy Port information where Fiddler is running.  Most likely Fiddler will be running on your local development machine.  If using Windows, you can find your IP address by going to the command prompt and using ipconfig (Start >> Run >> “cmd” >> “ipconfig”).

That’s all there is to it.  After you have this setup, make sure that Fiddler is running and web traffic from your Android device should be routed through Fiddler.  Happy web traffic inspecting!